Afterlife Programme
by reminiscent-afterthought
Summary: [Angel Beats/Digimon D-Cyber] Hikaru was trapped. So were the members of the SSS, for the most part. The Phantom seeks to free them all – by eating souls and forcing Hikaru to take up his digivice again.
1. how the board was set

**A/N:** Written for

Diversity Writing Challenge, h48 – write a crossover with both fandoms still in canon  
Ultimate Sleuth Challenge, Ch 2 – event 7 – write a threeshot  
Becoming the Tamer King Challenge, Event: The Digi-Egg's a Fake! - write a fic that is as many words as your maximum word bank (currently 7800 words)  
Crossover Boot Camp, #031 – parallel  
The Endurance Challenge, Week 1

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 **Afterlife Programme**

Chapter 1 _  
how the board was set_

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MetalPhantomon was a few things: a Perfect-level digimon, the God of Death, ambitious and currently hatching a plan to deal with the dregs of Royal Knights that remained.

He was also one of the rare digimon who could reach beyond the Digital World. Even Magnamon, the Royal Knight of Miracles, was restrained to that one dimension. And many of those who could cross had been torn apart in a way not even the digital purgatory could repair.

He'd located Omegamon and Imperialdramon, both split in half and both mere children wandering happily about the world. Foolish children who didn't know of the power they'd once possessed, or the other half now lost to them. Those old forces had been powerful indeed, to rip them apart so permanently. But they were also gone.

For an ambitious digimon like himself, the digital world was ripe for the taking – if only he could overcome the last obstacles.

The remaining knights weren't as powerful as they'd once been, but they were still powerful. And they weren't as invested in the world as they had once been as well. No longer did they fight all the petty nuisances on the front lines. He'd attempted that already, to draw them out and coax them into a fight on his own less than fair terms. Those attempts failed. The Royal Knights did not rise to the bait and he was forced to consider other options.

It was one of those that included the digital world, and he realised their souls were very different to the digimon.

He decided they would be very useful pawns – though things did not go as planned. At all.

And most of it was Ryuuji Hikaru's fault.

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Ryuuji Hikaru was once the victim of a nightmare. He and three other children that were good friends of his. Pulled into another world where monsters were real and where they fought: each other, knights that tested them, and the enemy that sought to destroy them and the world they'd drifted in to.

It was a strange world, full of not only monsters but adventures too. It would have been more exciting if they'd been together from the beginning, if they hadn't had to roam around lost until they found their digimon partners: monsters they'd never met before who fought with them. And maybe it would have been more fun if they'd been together when they'd woken up in that world, instead of separated and pitted against each other. And maybe if they'd had the chance to spend some leisure time, instead of constantly fighting for their lives.

Not that the bonds they'd formed were sparse by any account, even if it had been a single night's dream – or nightmare, that they awoke from, hearts racing and the urge to seek each other out undeniably strong. So they'd sought each other. Confirmed the dream – or nightmare – had been shared between them, and also confirmed that the only thing that had travelled back over was fatigue. Their minds had been active all night long, after all. It was no wonder they'd awoken at the end of it as though they'd never slept. They hadn't.

But they'd forgotten one major detail, and they didn't realise it until quite some time later.

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It was determination that had attracted him, defeated him, and let him so quickly regain his former power.

It was also determination that would be the hero's downfall, and that was amusing at first. Justice well served.

But then time progressed and the Tamer grew ever paler, and revenge was most certainly not a dish best served cold. Or maybe he'd simply dove in too quickly, and now it had become a melted mess that sat on his chest and rebelled.

A human would have vomited. He'd have to do something else.

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Ryuuji Hikari was known to be quite an active child, at least before the age of eleven. Often, his parents had wondered if he'd ever settle down.

He started to, once he turned twelve. Started to slow down. Though that wasn't quite the same as _settling_. He didn't spend more time studying, or on the computer like many of his peers. And it wasn't as though his desire to be active was diminished. It was just his ability. They chalked it up to being tired, then, but it went on and on and slowly got worse and so they took him to a doctor.

They did simple tests at first: bloods, urine, all those sorts of things. But they came back normal and then the slightly fancier ECGs and spirometry came back normal as well. The only odd thing was the sleep study – since he'd started falling asleep at odd intervals and was getting difficult to get out of bed in the mornings. The doctors tried to slap a bunch of fancy labels onto it and in the end went with narcolepsy. But something still didn't quite fit in.

And then Masuken remembered the grid-like pattern that had formed on Hikaru's body, and how he'd been the last of them to return. And then they realised – or guessed, without solid proof and without any remembered dreams except that one to point them – just what it could be.

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They didn't realise it at first. The mysterious shadow creatures attacked, but they had skills and weapons and determination, and so they stood their ground. Didn't realise anything except that it was a strange phenomenon, because some of them had been in the Afterlife for a long time and didn't know such a thing. Their enemies, of course, had been Angel and Angel had been a formidable opponent. They'd suspected her this time as well, despite her having turned over a new leaf with them, and despite Otonashi Yuzuru saying otherwise. Except she fought those shadows to save them, and they had to accept two things: that she really was on their side (or they on hers) and that the shadows had another source.

They didn't find the source before Takamatsu was swallowed up by them and became a mindless husk. They didn't find the source even when they found the original Afterlife programme and its sorrowful tale. Didn't find the source when they made the group decision to abandon the Afterlife – because some of them had spent a terribly long time there, and there was another life waiting if they could let go.

It turned out to be relatively simple. By the time the SSS reached that point, the pieces were all in place for them to cross. Yuzuru himself was the final piece: Angel's piece, Tachibana Kanade's piece. And he was the only one to remain with the mindless husks and the shadows that hunted him, to guide those that came after.

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Miki Kiyoshi remembered very little about the Digital World, and once her friends discovered that, they stopped talking about it around her. She supposed that was fair enough. She'd found herself in a dark place in her nightmares, and then in Hikaru's arms, and then awake in her own bedroom and that was the extent of her adventure.

She hadn't even considered it might have been real until she'd overheard them. Teru and Masuken and Hikaru, arguing about something they'd dubbed "Digital Syndrome". And as she listened, bits of the story fitted neatly together. Like how they'd all woken up in a panic and called each other (except her, since her dream had been entirely non-descriptive – except for the shadow of something in a cloak, which might've been the MetalPhantomon they mentioned every now and then). And now they expanded on those dreams: something about a Dorumon and Grademon and knights of some sort and battles and fighting and –

 _Something's wrong with Hikaru?!_

She listened further, and on different occasions. Yes, something was definitely wrong with Hikaru. Sleeping later and later. Dozing off at odd intervals in the day. Being generally lethargic. And, most recently, collapsing in sports as well. Like something was sucking the energy out of him. Or like he had to live another life somewhere too – even if Hikaru claimed he hadn't visited the Digital World in his dreams except for that one time…

She didn't know much about the Digital World. She couldn't help there. But it still stung that they hadn't mentioned _this_ at least to her. Just because she'd been a prisoner for most of it, didn't mean she cared about her friends any less. And they'd saved her. Especially Hikaru. If the friendship spiel wouldn't be good enough, then she owed them her waking hours for getting her out of that eternal nightmare.

She ran through those points in her head again. _Yep, that sounds right._ And she stuck her hands into her pockets and crossed the street.

She forgot to look both sides first.

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Even if he'd been killed, reformatted and reborn, he was still the God of Death.

That didn't mean he killed the girl he'd once taken prisoner. That was a coincidence. Or the world's way in helping him in this endeavour. Didn't really matter. Her death opened up the road for him. Time and space twisted in the abyss beyond, and lost all meaning.

By the time things reformed, he'd lost the girl somewhere, still in the abyss. But the Afterlife was there.

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For a time, Otonashi Yuzuru was the only soul in the Afterlife, surrounded by mindless husks. He had information at his disposal but no longer any allies. His position as school council president (inherited from Kanade) was a token position at best, and his stripes otherwise. The shadows were always there – manageable since they never attacked the husks once they were form, but always there.

Though it didn't take long for the Afterlife to fill again and he found a new job: watching out for the new entrants, because the shadows would invariably be there as well, expanding its horde of mindless husks.

He might've lost a few before he caught on, because the first had run into him instead of the other way around. But then there were two of them, and they made sure to always stick together and the first two things that were explained were the process of moving on, and the shadows.

Turned out Miki Kiyoshi needed someone else's presence to be able to move on. The Tachibana Kanade situation, then. Though she was docile, soft-spoken and not a fighter.

That was fine. She had an imagination. And Yuzuru could do the fighting with the weapons she created for him.

The Guild resurrected with her at the head. Some of the latter additions joined her. Others reformed the SSS under Otonashi and they fought off the shadows as best they could.

And finally discovered that the population of shadows was proportional to the number of true souls in the Afterlife.

And so the battle went on, never-ending so long as there was a soul in the Afterlife and there was always a soul in the afterlife.

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They were fools, those children in the Afterlife. Or…they'd never had the fortune (or misfortune) of touching the Digital World. They didn't know it. They weren't aware of its existence.

And because they weren't, they'd never unlock the mystery that were the phantoms that chased them.

Their numbers tethered: grew quickly at first, when there were enough phantoms for only one teen but there were two of them, and then two for a team of four. They never realised how the phantoms slowly caught up, but never overwhelmed. Never thought of how the lone human had survived so long on his own, before help came along.

Because one human was necessary. Two humans were necessary. There was no need to empty out the Afterlife, simply to replace the empty husks with new data: Digital World data.

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Ryuuji Hikaru had had many a frightening experience in the digital world: many near deaths. He'd even come close to losing Dorumon more than once but none of that had prepared him for Kiyoshi's funeral.

And none of that had prepared him for his own impending death, that seemed more and more likely the longer he slept, the longer he struggled to wake.

He was slipping. He knew he was slipping, and he couldn't help it, though he tried. But how could he even struggle?

And he wondered what would even happen to him, in the digital world without his body, or simply cast adrift while his body was cremated and buried.

He wondered, and Teru and Masuken wondered too and they were equally helpless. The digital world was far beyond their reach.

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The original Afterlife programme was written by a man who'd wanted to reunite with his lover. It was painfully simple that way, but both it and the Digital World were proof of the power of such simplistic notions. The Digital World too, after all, had been born from a simple dream: of a child that had wanted a playground for his imaginary friends, and those imaginary friends themselves.

The child's father had created a simple game – the sort that nowadays any starting programming student could make. A simple thing that vanished as soon as the child grew out of that phase – but the Digital World endured. Just like the Afterlife endured. Both now lived independently, pulling discarded bits of data and identity to it and children – or their souls at least – as well.

But that was where they differed. On several points. On the children, it was two things: age and status. The digital world preferred them as children: real children, before their disillusioned teens. The Afterlife took those disillusioned teens instead.

And they took the dead. The Chosen in the digital world, separated from their bodies or not, were still alive.

But that was an arbitrary thing for a digimon like him. Digimon were, after all, reconfigured. Just as data was recycled. Humans weren't always reborn, as evidenced by the lack of children or adults in the Afterlife, and the husks that some left behind.

Who knew? Maybe it was because he'd followed a teenager that he would up in the teenage waiting room. Maybe there were similar afterlives for the children and adults too. Maybe the mindless husks that served as nothing more than scenery also had a place where their souls went. After all, he wasn't a soul devourer. Maybe whoever had created the initial husks had been. He didn't know and he didn't care.

He was simply setting the stage for something else.

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Miki Kiyoshi died at fifteen years old. Less than a year later, on his sixteenth birthday, Ryuuji Hikaru also passed away.

By that point, the stage was set. The Afterlife had enough digital husks to create a temporal digital field. Ryuuji Hikaru, who would have found his one piece soul torn into puzzle pieces otherwise, awoke in the musty soil of the Afterlife.

And he had the fortune to appear at the feet of one Otonashi Yuzuru – or, rather, Yuzuru had gotten good enough at predicting these emergences that he'd been in the right place at the right time.

So too, though, had those phantoms that hunted them.

'Welcome to the Afterlife,' he said, helping the teen up with one hand and shooting with a rifle slung over his other shoulder. 'Rule number one: do not get swallowed by these things.'

And Hikaru, who felt like he'd been sleeping for a very long time (which, in fact, he had), simply mumbled: 'swallowed?' And then, a breath later and slightly more articulate: 'Afterlife?'


	2. how the moves were read

**A/N:** Same challenges as last time, except now week 2 for the Endurance Challenge.

One more chapter left. Enjoy!

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 **Afterlife Programme**

Chapter 2  
 _how the moves were read_

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Ryuugi Hikaru's first impression of the Afterlife was that that this whacked out dream ranked right up there with the Digital World one, at least when it came to weird dreams. Or nightmares.

Probably nightmares. Dreams tended to factor out reality – like how getting tackled to the ground to avoid being touched by one of those shadowy creatures actually hurt. And how the hand gripping his arm to help him up hurt as well – and actually felt like a hand. Sometimes his dreams were weird and distorted things. Sometimes everything felt the same, but the hand felt like a hand and the grave that had cut into his palms and knees felt like gravel and that was all so exact.

And in front of him was a guy he'd never met before. Or, at least, he was pretty sure he'd never met before. Random guys didn't tend to appear in dreams. Normal dreams anyway.

Then again, there was the Digital World with had been a dream but not a dream. Something that had pulled his soul out of his body but left a connection behind and that, in going back in the state he'd been in after all that, meant he'd infected his human body with something that didn't belong in it.

And there was no way to explain that to the adults. No way to work out how to fix it themselves, either. They hoped the Digital World would contact them again: Dorumon or the Royal Knights or _someone_ but no-one did. No knight in shining armour raced to save him like he'd raced to save Dorumon and the Digital World.

No knight in shining armour raced to save Kiyoshi when she died, either. And that had shocked them badly. Shocked them badly because they'd been watching and waiting for _him_ to die – he, Hikaru, not Kiyoshi – and then one day Kiyoshi was just…dead. Unexpectedly. Without a goodbye or a reason. Hit by a car – or was it a truck? He couldn't even _remember_ – and then…gone.

And now he was in this weird dream and the guy fighting off shadows called it the Afterlife… Did that meant he'd died?

 _This was death?_

He'd sooner believe it was something not unlike the Digital World.

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Otonashi Yuzuru dispatched of the shadows quickly. He'd had immeasurable experience against them, after all. And sometimes it seemed there was something else protecting him as well. Not like the NPCs that were entirely ignored. Something else. Maybe it came from being the Student Council President. Or maybe it was because he was an anomaly in this world. Because he hadn't died with regrets but found his way here to alleviate somebody else's regret.

 _Kanade…_

But he wouldn't meet Kanade again unless he left the Afterlife, or unless she returned. And he didn't want her to return because that would mean she'd died with regrets again and it wasn't fair to die twice like that. Wasn't fair to die once like that either but life wasn't always fair. It was the whole reason the Battlefront had existed. Why Yuri and the others had fought so hard, refused to let themselves be happy in this new world even though they'd been sacrificing their reincarnation to do so.

But they hadn't known that. Not then. _Cute silly socially-awkward Kanade…_

But Yuri and Kanade were both on earth, reborn. And he was in the Afterlife, looking after the new people who came through.

Like this one. He offered him a hand, then smiled apologetically at the red smears on his knees. 'Sorry about that,' he said. 'These shadow things enjoy welcoming people to the Afterlife – but get swallowed by them and you lose your chance at getting reborn. As I said earlier, rule number one is not to get swallowed by those things.'

'Don't get swallowed by shadows.' The boy swallowed himself. 'Right. That sounds easier said than done.'

'It'll come,' Yuzuru said kindly. 'There are lots of ways to fight and protect yourself here. Enhancements. Weapons. And we've got a few people who can teach you hand to hand if that interests you…' He was babbling a little and he knew it, but he also knew most newcomers didn't process much at the beginning so that was fine. Wasted words got wasted like they should. It turned out to be very efficient in the end.

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Later, they sat in the council room. 'I'm Otonashi Yuzuru,' Yuzuru said again. 'I'm the school council president here.'

'The Afterlife is a school?' the other repeated. 'This really is a whacked up dream.'

'Not a dream, I'm afraid.' And his face drooped with sympathy. 'You died down in earth, and died with regrets. That's why you're here.'

'I've dreamt I've died before,' the other countered. 'I've also dreamt quite long dreams – where I go on an adventure and sleep and wake up and eat and do all those normal things and a few abnormal ones – and then wake up the next morning in bed for real.'

Yuzuru smiled a little. 'That makes things a little difficult,' he admitted. 'But I might have a counter for that as well. But could I get your name?'

'Oh.' The boy looked abashed. Perhaps he thought he should have been polite even in a pseudo-realistic dream. 'Ryuuji Hikaru.'

'Ah.' And Yuzuru's smile is full-blown. 'I definitely have a counter.'

'For my _name?_ ' Hikaru stared, agape.

'For proving this isn't a dream,' said Yuzuru. 'And be grateful Kanade is no longer the president. She had a tendency to do it by killing you. Though you'd wake up afterwards completely healed.'

'…oh.' And the boy just blinked.

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Hikaru decided that the dream was starting to surpass the Digital World one. Waking up from lethal blows? And the afterlife was a school? That really sucked. But he might wake up in the real world again – just like he'd woken up from the Digital World and it wasn't like the Digital World didn't exist. They'd proved it, what with all of them remembering the dream they'd shared.

Yuzuru had wandered off. Gone to collect his proof, he said. And to give Hikaru a bit of time to let things sink in.

Yeah, that was a little troublesome. Should he believe himself to be dead or not? And did it really matter? He was stuck there either way. Stuck there until he awoke or – got reincarnated? Was that what Yuzuru had said?

And why did getting gobbled by shadows nullify that when dying by other means did not?

Then again, Masuken was the thinker in their little group, so maybe he'd just missed something painfully obvious.

But then he forgot that entirely when a girl walked into the room. Wearing the same uniform as Yuzuru, but otherwise familiar. Painfully familiar.

'Kiyoshi!'

The chair he'd been seated on tilted and fell behind him with a crash.

Kiyoshi – but Kiyoshi was long dead.

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Kiyoshi had expected Hikaru would show up in the Afterlife eventually. Perhaps she had even hoped it – but how could someone wasting away so slowly not die with regret?

Still, that didn't prepare her for the reeling shock that came with the realisation that he was _dead_.

She ran to him. She caught him around the middle and hugged him tight and until he squeaked. 'Kiyoshi!'

'I'm so sorry,' she sobbed into his shoulder. 'I wish – I wish you could have lived longer.'

Hikaru hugged her back. 'This…isn't just a nightmare.'

'It's real,' she sobbed sadly. 'We're dead and we're chock full of regrets and we're here.'

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Yuzuru watched them both. He'd talked to her already. They'd worked out her regret and why she was stuck, stuck waiting for Hikaru and stuck even longer than that, long enough for them to live a happy life together. That would take time. It wasn't like Kanade's case at all, when she could have left with just a few words but she'd clung to them as long as she could bear. They needed the time to actually _live_ together and that mightn't be enough. There'd been four friends, drawn close together by an experience nobody else could understand. It could take all four of them to be free – but it was also possible the other two would die with the same regrets.

Time was strange in the Afterlife. There'd been Shiina, born far before any of them. There'd been Kanade, born after him and yet he'd arrived in the Afterlife a long time after her. There were possibilities. He'd discussed a few with Yuuri. The simplest and most likely – Occam's razor, really – was that time held no meaning in the Afterlife. The other possibility was that he'd lived and died again but that made little sense in retrospect. Yuuri never did find out his heart was beating inside Kanade's chest. Or had been. It had come back, presumably when she'd been reborn back on earth.

And he didn't need to cut his chest open to know that. Which was a nice side-effect from his first aid training. And being able to save all those people when the train got tunnelled in was what had allowed him to die without regrets. Who cared if he never became a doctor? What he'd set out to do was save people's lives, so they'd smile when they were reunited with their families. Sure he didn't seem most of those reunions in the end. Some came by to see him in the few days he'd had left after they'd been rescued. Igarashi had been an idiot and stayed till the very end.

He was grateful to Igarashi, for staying with him that long. Even if most of him hadn't been there. Because he died accomplished, and not alone. What better death was there?

And if he hadn't said goodbye to everyone – Kanade and Yuuri and all the others – then he could have gone on living here just fine as well.

Funny how his regret hadn't been born until he was trapped here.

But he didn't want it to end with Kanade coming back. That wasn't fair on her.

There had to be another way to end the Afterlife Programme.

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Unlike Kiyoshi, Hikaru was a fighter. And fairly experienced, too. Said he was out of practice but that didn't matter at all in the Afterlife where Yui who'd been completely paralysed was able to move just fine. So Hikaru was more than a match for the shadows when he wasn't in shock at being thrown headfirst into the Afterlife. And that left Yuzuru a little freer, because after Yuuri was gone, there hadn't been many good fighters who could hold down the fort without him.

Not that he was anything spectacular, but he'd been in the Afterlife far longer than the rest. He knew the ins and outs. He knew how to enhance himself. Just hadn't managed to figure out what would be effective against them and didn't really have the time to try.

Now he tried in earnest, and Kiyoshi helped. They dove into every book they could get their hands on, every avenue they could explore.

They didn't make a breakthrough though until Kiyoshi created an odd fox-like creature after HIkaru mentioned missing a "Dorumon".

And when Hikaru saw the creature and yelped that same name, Yuzuru assumed the little fox-like creature _was_ Dorumon. Or as close to Dorumon as could be created.

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Turned out Dorumon was Dorumon – or at least, Dorumon as far as Hikaru and Kiyoshi both remembered him. But Dorumon was not human, nor a teenager, and Yuzuru could not fathom how it – he – had wound up in the Afterlife.

Then again, the shadows weren't human but had wound up in the Afterlife as well.

He went back to first principals. They knew very little about the Afterlife in the end. Just that it seemed to exist on a floating timeline, that their minds and the imagination housed within it were their most powerful weapons, that it had once been a computer programme set to immortalise one woman and had somehow expanded into this – this school for dead teenage souls with regrets. To fight against God, Yuuri had said. To live a normal life, was Kanade's idea. And then there was his own, which seemed to be working just fine and better than the two girls': to alleviate those regrets they'd died with.

Then again, some of those regrets were pretty complicated.

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Kiyoshi somehow managed to bring Dorumon to the Afterlife. Hikaru could have kissed her. Actually kissed her, to be honest, because he was a teenager and hormones and emotions mixed together make for an awkward force. But she didn't seem to mind too much, aside from going beet red. 'It's okay,' she'd mumbled, before he could apologise.

He apologised anyway. And now there was a whole new problem to deal with. Did he like her? As in _like_ like her?

And Dorumon – how was it really Dorumon, with all the memories from the Digital World? How had he wandered into the Afterlife?

Masuken would've had theories. Hikaru just had questions – and relief and strength from having Dorumon there, by his side.

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Yuzuru had been getting pretty good with computers, thanks to the Afterlife. He analysed Dorumon with them. Realised Dorumon was made entirely of data, just like the world. Made entirely of data and yet he couldn't be reproduced, couldn't be recreated and seemed to remember things from a time in another world.

They were data too, but there was something about their souls that couldn't be mapped.

There must be something about the Dorumon like that as well.

And it took him a while before he found it. The noise. The blank space that must have been his soul.

Hikaru affirmed it – that orb inside Dorumon's chest – and called it a "digisoul".

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Everything had its pattern of zeroes and ones. Some things were simple. The NPCs that looked so much like humans were more complex. So were the shadows.

The teenagers who retained their souls and Dorumon were even more complex. And they couldn't replicate. Just appeared and disappeared. The shadows replicated. The NPCs replicated – and then merged together if there wasn't enough space for them and the souls. Or the shadows swallowed the souls.

Sometimes, it seemed like the shadow was just creating space. But they were too hostile for that.

Since Hikaru had appeared, the shadows had pretty much left the others alone.

It was a good thing Hikaru (especially with Dorumon's help) could more than hold his own against them.

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He couldn't replicate souls, but he could create a signal close enough to act as a space-filler. It was useless in anything but an academic sense, but that was all he needed it for. Shadows had to be from somewhere, something. He could use this to find its origins.

He tested it on known things first. A table sung with the once soul of a tree. Clothes sung of sheep and cow and plants. The NPCs sung with the name of the teen whose image they lived on in. Some names he knew. Some he didn't. He didn't touch the friends he knew he'd failed.

The shadows sung like Dorumon – similar, but different. Same species, but different individuals.

'Other digimon,' said Kiyoshi, when he told her. 'Are they the dead as well, or have they bent sent?'

'Sent,' Yuzuru replied. He remembered Yuuri telling him that. And she'd been sure. She'd had proof. 'They're here to accomplish something.'

They attacked Hikaru now. Only Hikaru.

'Could it be…MetalPhantomon?'


	3. how the game was played

**Afterlife Programme**

Chapter 3  
 _how the game was played_

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It worked. The increase in digital world data in the Afterlife had attracted Hikaru's dissociating soul. Sending Dorumon had been a little trickier, but opportunity had afforded him the chance. Now it was a matter of wrapping things up. Editing the programme yet again so the modifications could be neatly packaged and removed without damaging the rest. Because it wouldn't do at all to have so many restless, regretting, souls suddenly cut loose into the world.

Their second chances wouldn't be like his: a breath of fresh air from the fog that had throttled them at first. They wouldn't have a chance to give thanks, to do better by their new life, their new opportunities. They'd be doomed to repeat the same mistakes again and again and again…

Well, look at him, suddenly sympathetic for the entirety of the human race. But a fair number of them had become his pawns in paying back Ryuuji Hikaru, so perhaps he was as selfish as he always was.

That was its own sort of perpetuating cycle, but that was fine. He was a digimon. He could afford to die and be reborn again. It was the digital world's fault, anyway, for restoring him so quickly and restoring his memories as well. As though they'd always meant for him to take this course of action and that irked him a little. He was the game master, not a pawn, but Homeostasis was invisible to him and, now, invisible even to the remainder of the Royal Knights as well. And it hadn't revealed itself to the children either. Was there a living being who Homeostasis would reveal itself to? Or would it continue to interfere from the shadows and give them the illusion of free will?

He'd hated that, last life. He'd sought to shatter its chains. He'd failed. He hadn't even found the chains to break before he fell.

Or was it no illusion at all? Were there no chains? Had Homeostasis abdicated from its role as the controller of fate, the writer of their tales?

This life, it didn't matter. He was simply paying back a debt. Next life…he might consider it.

It might be a very slow next life…and he wouldn't mind if it was.

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'MetalPhantomon?' Hikaru repeated, before he groaned. 'Seriously? He's probably got an even bigger grudge against us now – for killing him and all.'

None of them consider there might be another reason behind his intervention. Why would they? They have no proof at all, and they're only just starting to piece the story together.

Kiyoshi had been a very minor player in the digital world. Perhaps MetalPhantomon had forgotten her entirely. Hikaru though – Hikaru was at the centrepoint. Hikaru and Dorumon – Grademon. They couldn't be forgotten, couldn't be ignored. Just like how the sun in the sky couldn't be ignored.

No wonder the phantoms flocked to him now.

He could handle it, but they kept on coming. How long would this stalemate go on?

.

New people still came to the Afterlife. Old people managed to settle their regrets and leave as well. Through it all, Hikaru and Kiyoshi and Yuzuru remained.

'Do you know what your regret is?' Hikaru asked one day. 'It's pretty sad you don't ever try to settle it.'

'I can't,' said Yuzuru, without hesitation. 'My regret is that I fell in love too late. I can't leave unless she returns. And…' And here, he had to hesitate, because he both wanted and did not want her to return.

'…what's her name?' Kiyoshi asked, after a brief pause.

'Tachibana Kanade,' and there was a small, sad smile on his lips when he said it. 'She was the previous school council president.'

.

The attacks went on. They occurred whenever Hikaru ventured outside of the school building. Left him alone in class, in his dorm, but as soon as he was in the courtyard, he was fair game it seemed. And he could not, and would not, stay inside.

And if they tried to keep him, the phantoms went back to attacking other souls. So there really wasn't much they could do but let Hikaru and Dorumon go out there and try to thin a horde that never thinned. And in the meantime, Kiyoshi and Yuzuru and anyone else who could help out combed through every book on data and coding and the digital world that appeared in the library, attempting to find out the secret of the phantoms – and maybe even the world.

.

Once, when Kanade and Yuuri and the others were still there, they met a man in the computer room. The computer room had been destroyed and rebuilt since, but Yuzuru and Kiyoshi made their way there anyway.

The man wasn't there. The manual was, though. "Afterlife Programme" – but it was less of a manual and more of a tale about having regrets, growing them, and letting them go. The fable that built the school. What they already knew. That trip at least had turned out to be a waste, but it let them revisit the basics.

The Afterlife had been created from a single man and a single wish. But now it was teeming with the wishes of every person who passed through. Girls Dread Monster still existed, even though its founding members had long since passed on. Iwasawa Masami had been the first person Yuzuru knew to overcome their regrets and pass on – even if they hadn't understood at all at the time. The book – more of a journal, really – would have helped them then. It wouldn't help them so much now.

Until Kiyoshi got the idea to ask for another journal…except this time, from MetalPhantomon.

'Do digital monsters attempting to take over the world even keep journals?' Yuzuru wondered aloud.

He should have known better to think the Afterlife conformed to such restraints of logic.

They got their journal.

.

Kiyoshi combed through the journal. Hikaru and Dorumon handled the Phantoms. Yuzuru was supposed to look after the new students who came, but there wasn't much to do on that end with Hikaru on the outside to protect and illuminate them when they first came in, and Kiyoshi to follow up.

He wondered if he was becoming redundant. Wondered if this meant his time in the Afterlife was coming to a close, and his reincarnation approaching. The same thing had happened with Kanade, after all. He'd been there for Kanade to say "thank you" to for months, and yet it was after her role as school council president was no longer necessary – in the present, at least, because it would always be necessary in a future where new teenagers with new regrets arrived – that she spoke those words and disappeared.

And yet she couldn't have done that without his presence. So did that mean Kanade was about to appear again? His feelings were mixed on the topic. They were always mixed on that topic. He wanted her here, but for her to be here meant a sad life she didn't deserve again…

But the Afterlife, aside from the whole phantom problem, was well under control. They no longer needed him there to hold down the fort.

.

It took Kiyoshi a while to read the journal she'd requested from the world. It told of the origins of the digital world: about Homeostasis who controlled with iron chains and the Royal Knights who protected it. It told about how there'd been a huge war, between those forces who desired to break free from the fate Homeostasis decreed for them, and Homeostasis and those who were devoted to it. It told of how a virus ravaged digimon-kind, and how a few of them mutated to fight it – and they were named "X". It told of how the war ended, how Homeostasis chose to seal the digicore – the source or perhaps cornerstone of its interference – away and retract itself from the world and left them to fend for themselves, either because it believed in them or felt they deserved it for their insolence.

After that was the shaping into the digital world they saw. The surviving Royal Knights slipped away. Digimon like MetalPhantomon wondered if Homeostasis was truly gone, and they fought. MetalPhantomon summoned them humans because humans powered the potential of digimon, their digisouls, and there was a source of power that had been exploited before. Except they – or Hikaru and Dorumon mostly – overcame MetalPhantomon and defeated him. And how the digital world progressed after that.

Their partners were fine, which was nice to know. Even the partner she'd never met, but a talking plant called Palmon X seemed oddly appropriate. One of the species that survived the war ten thousand digital years ago, then – or maybe more. The journal wasn't very aware of human time.

Palmon X was like Teru's Agumon X. But Ryuudamon and Dorumon were different. Dorumon was one of the Royal Knights reborn. Though Ryuudamon's involvement in the old war was one they hadn't been aware of at all. Apparently an experiment by those who sought to go against Homeostasis. The dragon God killer who turned out to lack the potential to kill a God. But they'd chosen a General to model Ryuudamon. Perhaps that was the logical conclusion. Ryuudamon had been a perfect fit for Masuken, down the road.

And MetalPhantomon had known it all and tried to play to his desired endgame. But somewhere, he'd misplayed. Or perhaps some of that information had come to him in hindsight, after he'd lost and drifted in the data stream before rebirth. There wasn't a very good grasp of time in the book. Ten thousand years between the two wars and nothing else. Who knew what was from the past and what was from the present, and Dorumon's memory didn't stretch far enough to learn. She could request more books from the digital world, to be sure, but was it necessary? Not yet, she decided. She wanted to know the rest of MetalPhantomon's tale.

.

The time had come. Data had potential, but it required something else to give it form, and humans had the best source of that which shaped their potential.

The puzzle of his phantoms had finally been solved. Now, they would open the gate for him.

Perhaps, for the two of them, it would mean very different things. Ryuuji Hikaru may never understand his reasons, despite all this, but that didn't matter. It was the dues he owed. His reason for this new life – and whether he'd chosen it or not, it didn't matter. Ryuuji Hikaru had been the first and only thing on his mind when he'd been reborn, and being reborn as the Perfect digimon he'd died as left him too narrow-minded to seek another avenue to life.

Unlike Dorumon and Ryuudramon who had changed the tale of their past fates so thoroughly.

Even before he'd understood the irony of their pasts, he'd been jealous of them.

Now…he owed them. And he'd pay them back the only way he could. He'd make it possible for them all to reunite again. Though it wouldn't be up to him when or where. He was the God of Death, not of life, and Homeostasis could not interfere with the human realm. And if it honoured its claim of abstinence, it would not interfere even if it could. He was able to interfere with Ryuuji Hikaru's fate himself – and so he did.

Now, it was time to bring an end to his interference.

.

Kiyoshi had to go to the courtyard and scream her answers to Hikaru and Dorumon as they fought. Hikaru couldn't seem to get a break otherwise and it was a miracle he hadn't been worn down by it. Or maybe it was just the presence of other teenagers in the process, and Hikaru's uncanny ability to hold a conversation even as he fought for his life. It broke up the monotone even if the stalemate was a constant.

And now she was the converser, joining in the fray. She was no fighter though. Yuzuru had come as well and he was covering her, firing at any shadow that got close and Kiyoshi was suddenly wishing she'd taken the chance to practice with at least one gun model so she could hold her own – but she'd uncovered something important. She was sure of it.

'MetalPhantomon wants to fight you again!'

And it sounded absolutely ridiculous when she said it like that, but she couldn't do much about it.

'Like unfinished business,' she explained. 'He feels he owes you something – can't tell whether that's good or bad – and he's going to fight you to pay you back.'

'Can't tell?' Hikaru repeated. 'Not clear revenge?'

'Don't think so.' And that was what boggled her. But that wasn't the important bit right then. 'And when you acknowledge him, he'll app –'

The phantoms suddenly pooling together cut her off.

.

It was time. Whether he meant to or not, Ryuuji Hikaru acknowledged him and the fight he demanded.

It was time to lay that boy's regrets to rest – and free his soul from the chains that bound it to the digital world as well.

.

They fought. It was an odd fight, Dorumon climbing through its evolutions until it was Alphamon and it could go no higher, not without Ryuudamon. But MetalPhantomon was an equal match at all of those levels: only as strong as required.

At first, in any case. Eventually, he fell back under Alphamon's onslaught. He fell, and then unleashed his final attack before he faded into nothing.

And they all heard the words. 'Now you're free…to be reborn.'

And they understood the last bit of the puzzle.

.

Hikaru and Dorumon were suddenly gone. Kiyoshi only recognised that aloud before she too faded away, and Yuzuru was left standing there alone. No more phantoms hunting souls – but did that mean they wouldn't come back again? Would there be something else to break the otherwise monotonous school in the Afterlife? Or would his chance for finally moving on come.

This time, there was no discord in his mind. He wanted Kanade – and the rest of his friends as well. He wanted to be reborn. He wanted to leave the Afterlife.

And then a new figure blinked into existence before him. Small, with silver hair cascading down her shoulders and her eyes flitting about in growing recognition before focusing on him.

He embraced her before his mind caught up. _Kanade…_

.

In the digital world, MetalPhantomon's egg floated gently down, and so did Dorumon's. Three digimon saw them: a Ryuudamon, an Agumon X and a Palmon X, and they quickly understood.

They'd wait. And this time, the enemy of the past would join their rank as friends.

.

In the human world, almost ten years had passed for Masuken and Teru after the deaths of their friends. They'd grown out of school: had careers, married, and now their wives were expecting.

They'd already chosen names, though it would be quite awkward if they had a boy each, or both a girl. But as luck would have it, the two children were a boy and a girl, born within an hour of each other.

Masuken named his son "Hikaru". Teru named his daughter "Kiyoshi". It was a tribute to the friends that had died before their prime.

And when they grew and the likeness to their namesakes was too uncanny to ignore, they wondered if it was something more than that. If this was the second chance they both deserved.

 _Welcome back._

.

.

 **A/N:** The end. That was tricky, trying to keep each chapter exactly 2600 words so they'd add up to 7800 in total. But it's done! And hopefully didn't screw up either canon in the process. The pairings sort of snuck in unintentionally. Masuken and Teru's kids being the reincarnation of Hikaru and Kiyoshi though – sometimes I think I overuse that plot device, but oh well. _Some_ time had to pass, after all. Had to make up a few things in regards to Kiyoshi – like her surname and her fated partner. And dunno why MetalPhantomon suddenly decided he wanted to redeem himself in an obscure way – but that's what muses do, I guess. Hope you enjoyed!


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